This invention has relation to the use of cornstalks, oat, wheat and bean straw and other crop residues as a heat energy source for combustion in a furnace to provide heated air for crop drying and for other purposes.
Corn coming from the field with approximately 25% moisture content or more is preferably dried to about 13% moisture content for storage. Typically this is done by use of a propane heater feeding heated air to the bottom of a column of shelled corn in a crop dryer bin. Such heaters are direct fired, and the products of combustion of the propane and air are forced through the crop from below.
This invention relates to burning of crop residue biomass to replace the burning of propane or other off-farm energy sources.
Attempts have been made to utilize straw or other biomass to dry corn by forcing the products of combustion directly into the crop dryer, but this results in black, sooty, contaminated corn.
Applicant has caused no preliminary search of the prior art to be made in the records of the United States Patent and Trademark Office; but has contacted scientists at the University of Minnesota and at Iowa State University, and found that research has been going on only at Iowa State and that it was still in the analytical stage. Applicant and those in privity with him know of no closer prior art than that referred to above; and they know of no prior art which anticipates the claims made in this application.